


like a stone

by halfwheeze



Series: Starkbucks Bingo 2020 (Round 1) [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Discussed Death of a Child, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mourning, Past Character Death, Stillborn, stillborn child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 09:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24847750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: There's a party that Bucky and Tony are supposed to be attending, but they have a talk instead. It's not really a fun talk.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Series: Starkbucks Bingo 2020 (Round 1) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1797514
Comments: 3
Kudos: 77
Collections: StarkBucksBingo2020





	like a stone

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for the Starkbucks Bingo -   
> N5: Undercover Journalist

There’s a buzz of noise all around, the clinking of glasses mixing with the current of conversation that washes over Bucky like a tide. He’s personally conversing with Sam and Steve, though they’re leading the conversation much more than he is, as per usual. He supposes that Sam could do worse than his piece of shit best friend, and Bucky is glad that Steve has someone worthwhile watching his six, even if the Falcon is more often watching Steve’s ass. 

Bucky scans the party mechanically, careful in checking for all of the friends that he has collected in his short tenure as an Avenger, and he numbers them carefully. Clint and Tasha are shooting the shit with Bruce over by the bar, competitively flirting and trying to turn the man red rather than green, so Bucky just counts them off. Miss Potts stands with Happy Hogan and a few business execs, people that Bucky doesn’t know and has no desire to, though she looks like she’s having a good time. The Maximoff twins and the Vision are trying to covertly sneak away, but Pietro flashes Bucky a smile when he notices Bucky noticing him. Bucky gives him a nod, a little quirk of his own smile. 

He accounts for all of the Avengers, counting off Scott and Hope as he notices them lounging with Cassie as she laughs at Peter Parker’s attempts to amuse her, but there’s one he can’t seem to find. He walks away from his conversation with a nod at Sam, knowing that he’ll rein Steve in from running after him the second that Bucky needs a minute to himself. 

“JARVIS,” he says once he gets to a space where no one might hear him, the silent kitchen that’s to one side of the common floor. He can barely hear the party through Tony’s thick walls, and he feels his hackles go down from where he hadn’t known they had risen. The AI answers him promptly. 

“Sergeant Barnes,” JARVIS addresses him, a lilt of amusement in his voice that Bucky still doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand how Tony went and made a person, a  _ person,  _ out of circuits and lines of code. Tony would argue that that’s not exactly what JARVIS is, but, genius or no, Tony’s wrong on this one. FRIDAY is a person as well, though Bucky speaks to her more in his own quarters; JARVIS has more of the run on Tony while FRIDAY is more for the advisement of the other occupants of the tower. Bucky loves them both what is likely an embarrassing amount. 

“Where’s Tony? He okay?” Bucky asks, to which JARVIS gives a moment of silence that seems strangely deliberating. 

“Sir is…” JARVIS begins, hesitating, “I do not believe that he is okay. He has made physical contact with a bottle of liquor four times in the past fifteen minutes, though he has not yet drank anything. I fear that that may not last much longer.” Bucky winces; Tony hasn’t had a drink in ten months, he knows, and anything that makes him backslide like this, enough to even think about it, can’t be good. 

“Where is he, JARVIS?” Bucky asks again, softer this time, and he swears that JARVIS seems relieved that someone else cares. 

“The west balcony of this floor, Sergeant. Look after him, please,” JARVIS says, and Bucky nods. 

“Always,” he promises despite himself, his better judgement that says that Tony can look at anything he says, that says that feeling the way that he does about Tony is illogical and will only end in ruins. 

He spent a lot of time with Tony when he first got to the tower. Where he and Pietro and Clint often had to be in the lab for repairs (Bucky for his arm, Pietro for his pacemaker after being killed did a number on his regeneration factor, and Clint for his aids), the three of them had formed a sort of bond with Tony. In where Clint had found something brotherly and Pietro had found something begrudgingly paternal, Bucky is… a little different. He wants something different with Tony, though he doubts that he’ll ever ask that of the man who has already given him so much. 

“You know, I had a sister. They named her Sofia. They decorated an entire nursery for her in sparkly pink. I was about five, you know, and my mama was so excited,” Tony rambles, a bittersweet smile taking over his face that makes Bucky ache. He doesn’t want to ask but he feels like Tony  _ needs  _ to talk about it, needs someone else to know the grief he so obviously wears beneath his skin, and Bucky finally sits down on the balcony next to Tony. He sits on the floor next to Tony’s chair just in case the other man finds a need for some sort of contact, even if it’s not anything that Tony’s ever done before. 

“What happened to her?” he asks hesitantly, leaning against the balcony railing beside Tony. He might have been worried about leaning against something this high up, able to fall into the city below and kill something with the weight of his body, but Tony built this building. Tony made these railings, Tony knows these measurements somewhere in the back of that beautiful mind, and Bucky will trust anything Tony Stark puts his hands to. Even when Tony doesn’t have that same trust in himself. 

“She was born still. Like a little stone, pale and grey and I shouldn’t have been allowed to see her, but there was an open casket funeral. She looked like a little baby doll. She would be forty today,” Tony tells him, hand wrapped around a bottle of whiskey that still hasn’t been popped open. Bucky takes it from his hands. It’s awful to mourn someone you never or barely had the chance to know. Even with the holes in Bucky’s memories, he remembers how badly that stings. He can still feel it sometimes if he lets himself. 

“She’s still forty today, even if you can’t help her celebrate. I had two sisters that survived to adulthood - Becca and Anna. But every year, we’d throw a party for Eliza’s birthday too. She died when she was six. She got pneumonia after being caught in the rain and she… she just never got better. It’s weird, you know. I remember  _ her  _ better than I can remember our mom,” Bucky muses, thinking about Eliza’s sweet smile, her little face. He had been thirteen when she was born in 1930, and she looked up to him so much. 

He remembers how badly it hurt to bury her. 

“No one knew about Sofia until after. Undercover journalist talked to me, asked me why I was upset. I don’t even remember what I said, but it was all over the papers the next day. Howard never did forgive me for that,” Tony ruminates, bitter smile taking over his face. He makes a weak grab for the whiskey that Bucky doesn’t even have to try to avoid, but he still pulls Tony into a hug anyway. Tony melts against him so easily it breaks Bucky’s heart a little bit - how long has it been since someone took Tony in like this? He hauls Tony closer against him and holds him up as he falls apart, and fall apart he does. 

“It’s okay,” Bucky whispers, petting Tony’s hair. “It’s okay to miss her. It’s okay to miss what could have been,” he continues, stroking down Tony’s back. The other man’s face presses against his shoulder and Bucky can feel when the tears start, but he’ll never say a word. He’ll never say a word about a thousand dollar suit that he cringed to purchase, a night with a party they’re both meant to be attending, a friendly relationship that used to have about two feet of distance between them. He won’t miss the distance. He’ll hold Tony and Tony can cry if he needs to and they’ll be okay. 

“It’s been forty years, Snowflake,” Tony says, trying to pull away. Bucky releases him a little, but doesn’t let him retreat fully. He doesn’t want Tony going all the way back into his shell, not now. He doesn’t want Business Tony. He wants  _ his  _ Tony. 

“Doesn’t matter how long it’s been. It’s still okay to hurt. Time may heal all wounds, but it still hurts sometimes when you poke at the scars. It’s  _ okay,”  _ Bucky reassures. He puts his forehead against Tony’s, makes the other man look him in the eye. Tony does, and when he does, there’s just enough light there for everything to be okay. 

“Thanks, Buck. Bad night, I guess,” Tony says, coughing to clear his throat. Bucky smiles, grabbing his hand. 

“Anytime, Tones. Wanna go back to the party with me? Or wanna blow this popsicle stand and go somewhere with me?” Bucky asks, not providing an option that lets Tony out of his side. Tony, realising his shenanigans, just grins back. 

“And where would we go?” he asks, his voice still thready with the remnants of tears, but Bucky doesn’t mind. They’ll be okay. 

“Wherever you want.” 

“Then let’s go.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Kudos and comment!


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